Other Crap

Box Office Mojo - Yearly Box Office for 2004, as of Friday. The surprises of the year?

• (1) Obviously, Passion fo the Christ. Whoda thunk it, except Mel? He made a gazillion dollars on that movie. I suppose it is the most money one man has ever made on one film. He did it with his own capital, did not spend that much. He had already pocketed a hundred million dollars after the domestic run, and it did monster numbers overseas and on DVD. I suppose he will finish with about three hundred million more in his bank accounts from that one film - more than Barry Bonds made in his career!
• Dodgeball. Surprise. You can make a buck by making a consistently funny movie.
• The Day After Tomorrow and Fahrenheit 9/11. Well, we know there are some liberals with money to burn! DAT is a crap environmental disaster movie that made almost $200 million, and F911 is a pseudo-documentary political polemic that raked in $100 million. I suppose Michael Moore took second place behind Mel for the biggest profit of the year for a single individual. That movie must have cost him about fifty bucks to make from on-the-street interviews and stock newsreel footage. For you foreigners, I can summarize American politics in a two sentence nutshell. Liberals buy movie tickets. Conservatives buy elections.